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CNET First Look

Brighter, better colors from Ikea's new LED light bulb

With 1,000 lumens and a color rendering score of 90, the newest Ledare LED from Ikea has us intrigued.

2:32 / 17 June 2015

Transcript

[MUSIC]
Hey, I'm CNET's Ry Crist.
The Ikea Ledare line of LEDs is growing, and one of the new additions is this 1,000 lumen bulb you can get in Ikeas right now for 11 bucks.
Now, 1000 lumens is kind of an odd number that's a lot brighter than most 60 watt replacements like these over here, those are about 800 lumens, but not quite as bright as the 75 watt replacement level where it's usually about 1100 lumens that you're getting.
So this bulb is kind of in the middle It's brighter than these 60 watt replacements, but not as affordable and not as efficient.
And it's cheaper than these 75 watt replacements, but not quite as bright.
So it all comes down to whether or not you're comfortable in that middle ground.
If you are I think you'll enjoy the outstanding color quality that this bulb offers.
The CRI score, the color rendering index, measures how good a given light source is at making colors look vivid and true.
So a good CRI score, one that's up in the 90s or close to 100, Will make your reds look red, your whites look white, all of your colors just kind of pop a little better.
And to see what I mean, take a look at this bowl of M&amp;M's.
Now, this is a multi-colored bowl of M&amp;M's, a white bowl.
We kind of get a little bit of everything in this picture.
Here we have the Cree 75 watt replacement.
A very typical LED with a CRI score of 80.
You can see the bowl looks a little yellowy.
Some of the red and orange M&amp;Ms are a little dull.
Overall, it's fine, but not ideal.
Now let's upgrade to the Ikea light.
You see the bowl instantly looks a lot more white, the reds pop a little better, the oranges look good.
Everything looks just a little more vivid and that's what you're getting with this light, a subtle uptick in color quality.
Now, where might you want that?
Well, a kitchen makes a lot of sense if you're cooking food.
Bright colored vegetables, you want it to look good.
Maybe a walk-in closet where you want your clothing to look accurate or maybe if you just painted your living room red.
All those scenarios make sense for a bulb like this.
Now the bulb shines at a 2700 K so it's a nice yellowey familiar incandescent like tone it uses 13 watts to put out those 1,000 lumens for an efficiency rating of 74 lumens per watt.
Now that's not great.
All of these bulbs are better than that.
Most bulbs today are at least 75 lumens a watt if not closer to a hundred so if you are an efficiency hound it's probably not the bulb for you That said, it's an omnidirectional bulb, it works well on dimmer switches.
And it offers pretty good value at $11, a lot better than most 75 watt replacements which cost 15 or 20 still.
At 11 bucks it's maybe not quite as competitive as last year's 600 lumen Ledare LED that Cost $5 but i still think that it's an interesting bulb that merits a close look if you like bright colors in your home.
For more, check out my full review at CNET.com.
For CNET appliances, I'm [INAUDIBLE]

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